


C_Spawn("scent_hound")

by Reginald_Magpie



Series: C_Spawn("Endgame") [1]
Category: EntoanthePack - Fandom, Game Grumps, Real Person Fiction, Rooster Teeth/Achievement Hunter/Funhaus RPF, Youtube RPF, markiplier - Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe - Apocalypse, Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Alternate Universe - Magic, Apocalypse, Car Chases, Chatlogs, Crimes & Criminals, Drug Use, Druids, Gods, Heroes & Heroines, Just Add Ninjas, Magic, Major Character Undeath, Manpain, Multi, Shapeshifting, Skype, Supernatural Elements
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-09-20
Updated: 2016-09-19
Packaged: 2018-08-16 04:10:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,202
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8086624
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Reginald_Magpie/pseuds/Reginald_Magpie
Summary: Gunner Gumm lived through the apocalypse, he lived through the colored rain and the magic seeping thick and pure from ravines opened into the earth. He lived and he tasted enough of it to become it; an apocalyptic rendition of pure magic in its finest form, a mimic and mirror of the magic around him. And in discovering the safety this afforded him around the magic quickly spelling demise for life as he knew it, he decided to begin research.This is a story about what happened when one guy decided to spend his post-apocalyptic time tasting things which should have killed him, and the rough and tumble group he managed to assemble to help him.





	

It probably would have been a dark and stormy night if the sky wasn’t choked by a dark plume of smoke with the faintest of lavender linings. Gunner shivered, shoving his way through the street, the larger-than-life-sized chess pieces strewn across the sidewalk make passage nearly impossible but after scrambling over a black rook he managed to wedge himself into the space between it and his front door.

It’d been raining deep violet rain for three days, but when Gunner squeezed himself into the door he was welcomed by the fanfare of the same news reports of destruction that had been snowing in for weeks. The living room was dim except for their stories being played out on the fuzzy television screen. Service had gotten worse over the months leading up to the apocalypse, but he’d kept the television on for the cats. He slung his bag down by the door.

Gunner shook the viscous purple liquid from his heavy overcoat and hood and ran a hand through his hair, shaking it out from under his hat. He double locked the door behind him. Gunner crossed to the couch, sighing, glancing around the dark living room with eyes that glowed like a predator’s in the light of the television and a quick sniff.The wolves he’d spent much of the last month with had given many gifts, not the least of which was this quick, accurate heightening of perception.

He folded himself down on the couch and dug his phone out of his pocket, pressing it to life. Skype’s notification blinked placidly at the upper left corner. D sent him a picture of the cloud of smoke choking his sky too, but he’d gone offline. As he was scanning his contact list the notification went off again.

**_Wade_ ** _ added  _ **_Entoan_ ** _ to this conversation. _

**_Wade:_ ** _ Hello? Anyone home? _

**_Wade:_ ** _ Not to panic anyone. Just thought we would check in. _

__ You know, to see if anyone else is dealing with wax hail falling into their yards. Haha. _ _

Gunner had been expecting this message. He just hadn't been expecting it so soon. 

**_Entoan:_ ** _ hey wade _

_ Purple rain here. Feels like jelly, definitely doesn’t taste like jelly. _

_ Is this everyone you were talking about? _

Gunner scrolled through the list of contacts, just three other people in the group. Wade he recognized, a friend of D’s who they’d gotten in contact with after everything went downhill. Bob he knew, too, but only peripherally. Then there was the third, someone he didn’t recognize, someone who’s contact information he didn’t have. "mfischbach". What a name.

 He dragged the bag he’d dropped upon entry gingerly over by the shoulder strap and flipped it open. At the top, there were various things to add to his stores of goods he knew people would pay top dollar for after all this was over. A couple cartons of cigarettes and cans of beer scored from the now-abandoned gas station at the end of the street and a few non-perishable food items from the grocery. 

Under them was a water bottle, glowing with tiny pinpricks of light wrapped in the dark cloud contained inside the plastic. He set it down on the living room table. His phone lit up again. 

**_Muyskerm:_ ** _ I really don’t think you should be tasting the things coming out of the sky. It could be a blue ice epidemic all over again _

**_Wade:_ ** _ Hey. :) _

_ Not much of an everyone. Just me, Bob, and Mark. _

_ Oh! _

_ Have you met Mark? _

Gunner sincerely hoped that Wade had more contacts than this, than just the three others sitting in the little skype room. If Gunner was going to figure out what was going on with this apocalypse, he'd need a veritable army, not three washed up guys who weren't even in the same state. 

**_Entoan:_ ** _ no, i dont think so _

_ But theres time for a cheery introduction later _

_ how many people do you know still kicking out there wade? _

_ also hey no I’m gonna taste what gets in my mouth it’s not like I  _ _ can help it. _

**_Muyskerm:_ ** _ Were you walking around with your mouth open? _

**_Entoan:_** _Its pouring its not that far fetched that it got in my mouth._

_ Maybe I stuck my tongue out. But that's not the point. _

**_Muyskerm:_ ** _ Good way to potentially get yourself killed don’t you think? _

**_Entoan:_ ** _ This still isn't the point. _

Gunner glanced down at the water bottle, picking it up with one hand and rolling it on his palm. The gelatinous galaxy encased inside it spun lazily as though suspended in liquid. This was just about the closest he'd ever been to pure magic. He'd seen other people touch it and die just from exposure, quick, a candle snuffed out. Others he'd seen who'd touched it had bodies warped by it so badly they seemed constantly in pain, they grew feathers or scales or lost limbs. When he'd collected it, though, from the crag which had split his little Arizona town in half, he just felt a strange tugging behind his navel, and then nothing once it was behind the plastic. It'd taken weeks to work up the bravery to do it, but it seemed more and more like only other things affected by the magic could affect Gunner; not the magic itself. This would probably prove useful. If he could find the means to test the extent of the shielding. He broke in before Bob could say anything else. 

**_Entoan:_ ** _ I found something. Well. Collected something. I found it before. _

It felt like a century before he gets a response, even though all three of the others were typing.

**_mfischbach:_ ** _ What did you find? _

_ **_Entoan:_ ** _ One second _ . _

Entoan closed skype and opened the camera on his phone as his family’s orange tabby worked his way across the carpet and then up the arm of the couch. He snapped a picture of the gelatinous galaxy and settled back down to send it to the group.

**_Entoan:_ ** _ This was leaking out of this fissure in the middle of town. I've watched other people touch it. It's not good. I don't know why I can. I don’t know what this stuff is exactly but it’s causing changes. _

_ maybe its a beginning of an explanation? _

For a moment, the room was dead. Then suddenly the other three were typing again.

**_Muyskerm:_ ** _ A fissure? Leaking? Give us all the details. _

The tabby startled as Gunner stood up, leaving the water bottle sideways on the couch while he quickly scaled the stairs in the two story house that had once held his family and how housed only the orange cat and him. 

He opened the door to his room and let his eyes skim the room quickly before settling in front of the monitors set up on his desk. They sprung to life in unison with a touch to the tower under the desk.

Key clacks filled the room.

**_Entoan:_ ** _ I’ve been hanging out in this graveyard just out of town.  _

_ my family’s buried up there after what happened when this all started, and there's this pack of wolves that are way too friendly _

_ they keep pointing me to interesting stuff _

_ anyway _

_ one of them made me leave a different way than I normally do and I guess it got me on a different path so I ended up on the main drag. _

Gunner was poised to continue explaining when DLive’s status went from offline to ‘busy’

**_Entoan:_ ** _ one sec _

D already knew everything they were going to say, but his input was valuable, and he was the only one of the group anywhere close to Gunner.

**_Entoan_ ** _ added  _ **_DLive_ ** _ to this conversation. _

**_DLive:_ ** _ Oh! Hey guys good _

_ im glad you already have a chat open _

_ My internet, or what's left of it, is probably about to cut out _

_ New York City is *gone* _

_ and I mean really gone _

**_Wade:_ ** _ Gone? _

**_DLive:_ ** _ Up in smoke. I don’t know if it burned or just started being… I don’t know. In ruins. But it’s smoking now. _

Gunner’s brows furrowed, his lips turning down. This was bad. This meant the aggressive magic growth in the east had officially overtaken that of the west. It hadn't been that way. The west coast had been doing so much worse but over the past couple of weeks it seemed like the tides were turning. Things were changing, very much for the worse in the east, and almost for the better in the west. 

**_Entoan:_ ** _ Jesus. _

There was a pause in the chat, a moment that let Entoan collect his thoughts. Everyone was quiet. Gunner suddenly felt very aware of being alone in his house.

**_Entoan:_ ** _ I think we need to figure something out. This is serious. Not that it wasn't before. _

The pause was shorter this time.

**_mfischbach:_ ** _ I think you all need to find your way out to LA _

_**Entoan:** Why LA? _

_**mfischbach:** You've seen the news. They're building a wall. It's safer here.  _

_**Entoan:** Walls can't keep everything out. Especially not this stuff. _

_**mfischbach:** It's a start. And all anyone has right now. I have a stable internet connection. Maybe if we can still get videos out we can still *help* people.  _

**_DLive:_ ** _what happens when the wall starts to keep people in more than keep this stuff out?_

_**mfischbach:** We cross that bridge when we come to it. There's nothing we can do this far away from each other. If we're going to do this we gotta do it safely. _

_**Entoan:** I guess. We don't really have a better option. But I don't have a car._

There was only a moment before DLive responded.

**_DLive:_ ** _ I’m headed west anyway. I’ll come scoop you up. _

_ Mark’s right. We have to figure out what to do. _

Mark nodded in approval, he was glad to see agreement from D. He was even more glad to know that his friend was going to be somewhere safe, or at least somewhere he could keep an eye on him.

**_mfischbach:_ ** _ Good, yes! We’re keeping in touch with some other friends. They’re our best bet for getting a more stable uh, base, I guess is what we could call it _

**_DLive:_ ** _ Other friends?  _

D had beat Gunner to the question. Instead of typing anything  else he switched tabs to open a map of Los Angeles, tracing the 800 miles between him and the city, and the extra hundreds between him and DLive. He had a feeling the 16 hours of driving might take longer than two days.

**_Entoan:_ ** _ How long until you’re ready for us? Where’s the rendezvous? _

**_mfischbach:_ ** _ Well, you can blame Wade for not telling you about the other guys, but I figure they're even busier than I am with having to scramble to move and stuff. As for a base? we haven’t found one yet. But they’re looking, so hopefully soon. And until then you can stay at my place :) So whenever. _

Gunner nodded, waiting for DLive’s name to pop up for a few moments before it did. 

**_DLive:_ ** _ Alright, gotta grab some things, but I’ll be at Entoan’s in the next couple of days, then we’ll come straight to you.  _

**_mfischbach:_ ** _ Great! We’ll be ready for you. And I’ll make sure to send you all my info, just so you can find the place. Wouldn’t want you to get lost _

**_mfischbach:_ ** _ I don’t think you explained more about what you found _

Gunner answered D’s private message about making sure he had a cat carrier and everything before he checked the group. 

**_Entoan:_ ** _ A lot of weird stuff _

_**mfischbach:** Weird stuff. Like the stuff in the bottle _

**_Entoan:_ ** _ Yeah. And stuff like the stuff it touches. Things going weird.  _

_ Some things die when theyre around it too long _

_ Other things just change _

**_mfischbach:_ ** _ What other things have you seen change? _

**_Entoan:_ ** _People. They get abilities or they just... deform._ _ The wolves were different, too. The graveyard, it talked or moved sometimes. Lots of animals, the area around here. Used to be red sagebrush desert, now it’s half forest. Greener than I’ve ever seen. The whole east side of town is like that. _

_**mfischbach:** Wolves huh? And a whole forest from the desert. Well that’s gonna fuck up the ecosystem. Were the wolves there before you got there? _

_**Entoan:** no. not before all this happened anyway. _

_ I think I'm gonna go invis. It's been a long day. If you need anything from me, ping D. He's got my number. _

Gunner clicked his status into invisible, and settled on his bed with the tabby. He stared at the popcorn ceiling with eyes that caught enough light to make it look like daylight. It'd gotten so hard to sleep since he started seeing so clearly in the dark. Or maybe it was just how tough it'd suddenly gotten to think about anything except when everything was going to go truly, one hundred percent off the rails.  He closed his eyes and tried to force it anyway. 

When Gunner finally went downstairs the next morning after near eight hours of laying awake with his phone lighting up his pillow, the waterbottle on the couch was gone, and the front door was swinging open. He'd never packed so quick in his life.  

 

 


End file.
